Mobile devices such as mobile phones have not only become a daily necessity for communication, but also prevailed as portable multimedia devices for capturing and presenting digital photos, playing music and movies, playing games, etc. With the advent of mobile device technology, mobile device vendors have developed numerous mobile applications for various mobile platforms such as Windows Mobile®, Android® and iOS®. Some mobile applications have been adapted from counterpart desktop applications. One example application that has been adapted from a desktop counterpart is a search application. A user may want to perform search related to an image. The user may then type in one or more keywords to the search application of his/her mobile device and perform a text-based search based on the keywords. However, due to a small screen size and small keyboard of the mobile device, the user may find it difficult to perform a text-based search using his/her mobile device.
Some mobile device vendors have improved usability of the search application in the mobile device by allowing a user to perform a voice-based search using voice recognition. A user may provide a voice input to the search application, which may translate the voice input into one or more textual keywords. The search application may then perform a search based on the translated keywords. Although the voice-based search provides an alternative to the text-based search, this voice-based search is still far from perfect. For example, to recognize the voice input accurately, the voice-based search normally requires a quiet background, which may be impractical for a mobile user travelling in a noisy environment.
Furthermore, a user may wish to search for an object in an image or an object in a place where the user is located. However, if the user does not know what the object is, the user may provide an inaccurate or meaningless description to the search application, which may result in retrieving irrelevant information.